Absolutely.
Russian increases in expenditures are largely aspirational. It's wonderful for Mr. Putin to have these bold plans. Whether or not he can pay for them and finance them I think is still very much in doubt.
New air bases are taking out of mothballs old Cold War air bases and infrastructure. The troop redeployments they are shuffling around in my view are a lot of smoke and mirrors for the domestic Russian audience. These are not offensive capabilities that can be deployed anywhere in the Arctic. Where are they going to go and what are they going to take over? There's nothing to do with it without potentially risking World War III, which is certainly not in Russia's grand strategic interest.
When it comes to their northern fleet, these recapitalization plans have been bantered about for more than a decade now. This is dealing with the deteriorating capabilities since the end of the Cold War. Even if they realized their most wild aspirations for their northern fleet it would still be a shadow of its former self. This is about them maintaining credibility as a global player.
I don't see the northern fleet, while it's deployed in an Arctic context, being an Arctic capability. So much of what we're seeing the Russians doing there is a defensive aspect, but I don't see an offensive dimension to it that should worry Canadians at this point.
We have commentators and analysts who are going to be monitoring these developments and a lot of my conclusions are based upon Mr. Putin being a rational actor. Maybe some of his actions would raise some doubts about that.